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Warm Months with Spring Wind — Zhejiang Folk Music Concert

Presenter: Folk Music Orchestra of and “Butterfly Girls Music” of Zhejiang Song and Dance Ensembles
Conductor: Zhang Lie
Venue: National Centre for the Performing Arts-Concert Hall
Dates: March 06, 2009    19:30
Price:  VIP    380    280    180    120    80 RMB

Programme Introduction

Zhejiang Folk Music Orchestra
Established in 1957, Zhejiang Folk Music Orchestra is a famous orchestra both at home and abroad with strong local musical features. Over 50 years, there have been many famous artists, such as Zhao Songting, a flutist, Song Jinglian, a Chinese flutist and Jiang Guoji, a flutist. Since 1980s, many excellent graduates of music academies have subsequently joined the Orchestra that enables it to maintain vitality.

Over many years, the Orchestra has dedicated itself to searching, sorting, studying and developing the folk music before producing a great many Chinese instrumental works of strong Chinese national style and Zhejiang local features, such as “The General’s Victory Song” and “Happy Song of a Fishing Boat”; flute music “San-Wu-Qi” and “Er-Fan”; erhu (two-stringed Chinese fiddle) music “Happily Working with Poles on Shoulders” and “Waterland Ditty”. Meanwhile, some original works by combining modern skills with the excellent national tradition, such as national symphony “Picture of Primitive Hunting”, Kun Opera music “Dreams in Boudoirs” and Wu Opera music “Enjoyment”. Having been highly commended, these works have a great influence around the globe. The Orchestra has visited tens of countries and regions like the USA, Germany and France on behalf of the state and Zhejiang province and received with great acclamation.

Zhang Lie
Zhang is a director of China Nationalities Orchestra Society, a Deputy Secretary General of Professional Conduct and Standards Committee and a national first-class conductor. Zhang is also a permanent conductor in China Broadcast and Film Symphony and Folk Music Orchestras, a composer of the Creating and Researching Studio of the Orchestra. Zhang also works as a visiting conductor and art director in such organizations as Central Conservatory of Music, Tianjin Symphony Orchestra, Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra, Singapore Chinese Orchestra and The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts.

Zhang has won awards like International Film Festivals and Awards, the “Five Ones” Chinese Award, “Trans-Century Young Musicians” and the title of “Best Actors” appointed by the Ministry of Culture. He has been visiting more than ten countries in Asia, Europe, America, and regions like Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, and worked as a co-composer and conductor who produced the first Chinese DVD “Tang Music and Dance”.

Good at accurately mastering and creatively exhibiting the meanings of the works, Zhang’s conducting style is careful, clear, deep, but very passionate. An English critic once commented, “The Chinese conductor Zhang Lie not only has good knowledge of the style and function of the Chinese music instruments, but has a unique interpretation of the music. In conducting on stage, he is the soul to balance the music and control the concert atmosphere, and leads the audience into a richly changeable and fathomless sensual world to the music. . .”

In recent years, Zhang’s music activities have been all over the world. In 2000, he conducted the dancing drama “A Lonely and Straight Smoke Rising over the Desert” co-produced by the Taipei Municipal Chinese Classical Orchestra and Taiwan Neoclassic Dance Company. In 2003, he cooperated with American and German musicians and participated in the modern music festivals in the Musikverein, Vienna and in House of World Cultures, Berlin,. In 2005, he went to Berlin to take part in the performance in the original music festival of “Sacrifices” and was invited by Hong Kong government to conduct the Hong Kong concert “World Youth Music Camp”. In 2006 accompanying Liu Sola Chamber Orchestra, he went to Frankfurt and Berlin to play with the Ensemble Modern (Germany) for the performance of opera “Dreaming to Be Queen”.

Programs
Instrumental music, accompaniment: Celebrating Spring with Hurricane Lamps (New)
Composer: Li Minxiong
Orchestration: Zhang Lie
Percussion: Yan Jianhua, etc.

National orchestra music: Double-Star Appraisal (New)
Composer: Wang Tianming

Yangchin solo: Ascending Tianmu in a Dream (New)
Composer: Xu Jianqiang
Player: Song Shanhu

Unison of stringed music: Virgo Bi-Melody (New)
Composer: Wang Tianming
Lead Player: Xu Yi

Reed pipe wind instrument solo: Festival on Tian Mountain
Composer: Cao Jianguo
Orchestration: Zhang Lie
Player: Li Xin

National orchestra music: Melody of Gathering Tealeaves
Composer: Chang Ping

—Intermission—

Guzheng solo (Chinese stringed zither): Regret at Linan
Composer: He Zhanhao
Player: Xie Tao

Quintet: Jumping Dragon
Composer: Hu Dengtiao
Players: Ma Lin, Song Shanhu, Chen Hongyu, Lan Jia and Duan Yandi

Flute solo: Episode of Plum Blossom (New)
Arrangement: Qian Zhaoxi
Player: Jiang Guoji

National orchestra music: Lyric Partita
Composer: Liu Changyuan

(Source: ebeijing.gov.cn)